Certain utility companies are experiencing a shortage of electrical generating capacity due to increasing customer demand for electricity. In particular, such utility companies can be unable to meet their customers' demand for electricity during peak demand hours. Increasing electrical generating capacity to meet the shortfall can be difficult due to increasing fuel prices. As a result, utility companies can be forced to buy electricity to meet their customers' demands. If peak demand hours can be reduced, then utility companies and their customers can realize a potential cost savings, and the peak load that the utility companies have to accommodate can also be lessened.
In order to reduce or discourage power usage during the peak demand hours, certain utility companies charge higher rates during peak demand hours. In particular, certain utility companies have instituted time of use metering and variable rates which include higher rates for energy usage during on-peak hours and lower rates for energy usage during off-peak hours. As a result, customers are provided with an incentive to use electricity at off-peak hours rather than on-peak hours.
To take advantage of the lower cost of electricity during off-peak hours, customers are generally required to operate power consuming devices manually during the off-peak hours. This can be undesirable because customers may not always be present in the home to operate the devices during off-peak hours. Further, customers may be required to manually track the current time to determine what hours are off-peak and on-peak.
Certain energy management systems include features for deactivating power consuming devices during the on-peak hours. Such energy management systems can determine when variable electricity-pricing schemes go into effect via schedules published by utility companies and inputted by customers or via signals sent by utility companies, e.g., over a wireless network or through a phone network, directly to the energy management systems. However, inputting schedules manually can be tedious and time consuming. Similarly, energy management systems relying upon utility company input to function properly can function improperly if the utility company fails to deliver the schedules as expected.
Accordingly, an energy management system with features for predicting on-peak hours and/or off-peak hours in order to reduce consumer's electric bills and also to reduce the load on generating plants during on-peak hours would be useful.